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Don Quixote

Miguel de Cervantes

The Second Part, Chapters LXI–LXVI

Important Quotations Explained

Chapter LXVII

Don Quixote implores Sancho to whip himself for Dulcinea’s
sake, but Sancho says he does not believe that his whipping will
help Dulcinea. Don Quixote then decides to be a shepherd during
his retirement, and he and Sancho begin to fantasize about their
simple, pastoral lives.

Chapter LXVIII

Don Quixote wakes Sancho in the middle of the night to
ask him again to whip himself, but Sancho again refuses. Sancho
discourses on the nature of sleep, and Don Quixote marvels at Sancho’s
eloquence. Don Quixote quotes one of Sancho’s own proverbs back
to him, much to Sancho’s astonishment. Some hogs that are being driven
to a fair trample Don Quixote, Sancho, and Rocinante, but Don Quixote
refuses to do battle with the hogs, believing instead that this
trampling is punishment for his defeat at the hands of the Knight
of the White Moon. Near dawn, ten horsemen ride up, capture the
pair, and drive them to the Duke’s castle.

Chapter LXIX

When the horsemen drag Don Quixote and Sancho into the
Duke’s courtyard, Don Quixote recognizes Altisidora on a funeral
bier, apparently dead. The courtyard has been set up as a court,
with the Duke, the Duchess, and two old judges, Minos and Rhadamanthus, sitting
above the rest. A musician sings a poem—which Don Quixote recognizes
as an adaptation of another poet’s work—telling that Altisidora
died out of her unrequited love for Don Quixote. Rhadamanthus demands
that Sancho suffer a beating to bring Altisidora back to life. Sancho
protests that he is tired of being beaten for Don Quixote’s lovers.
He nevertheless receives the beating, and Altisidora revives.

Chapter LXX

Cervantes says that Cide Hamete Benengeli tells how the
Duke and Duchess were able to locate Don Quixote: on his way to
defeat Don Quixote in the guise of the Knight of the White Moon,
Sampson stopped at the Duke’s house. Sampson knew that Don Quixote
and Sancho had been staying there because he had been told so by
the Duke’s page, who had visited Teresa Panza to deliver Sancho’s
letter. Hearing that Sampson intended to end Don Quixote’s career,
the Duke and Duchess determined to have one last bit of fun and
put the funeral sequence into action. Cervantes says that at this
point, Benengeli declares that he considers the Duke and Duchess
almost more mad than Don Quixote and Sancho for poking so much fun
at such fools.

Altisidora comes into Don Quixote’s bedroom and tells
him about her bizarre trip to the gates of hell. She says she saw
devils playing tennis and using books—including the false sequel
to Don Quixote—for balls. The devils said that
this false sequel should be thrown into hell. The musician from
the night before appears, and Don Quixote asks him why he used another
poet’s work to describe Altisidora’s situation. The musician answers
that people commonly steal one another’s literature in this age,
calling the practice “poetic license.” As Don Quixote and Sancho
take their leave of the Duke and Duchess, Don Quixote recommends
that Altisidora perform more chores so that she will not spend her
days pining away for knights who do not love her.

Chapter LXXI

Don Quixote yet again suggests that Sancho whip himself,
and Sancho again refuses. Don Quixote offers to pay Sancho, so Sancho goes
into the woods and whips the trees so that his master will think he
is whipping himself. The two then stop at an inn for the night, where
Don Quixote muses about the paintings on the walls, hoping one day
to be the subject of such paintings.

Chapter LXXII

While at the inn, Don Quixote and Sancho encounter Don
Alvaro Tarfe, whom Don Quixote recalls from the false sequel. Don
Alvaro admits that the false Don Quixote was his best friend but
that the Don Quixote he sees now is the real Don Quixote. Don Alvaro swears
to this account before the mayor, who records it. They stay overnight
in the woods, where Sancho completes his whipping, still only whipping
the trees.

Chapter LXXIII

As Don Quixote and Sancho enter their village, they hear
two boys quarreling and a hare running from greyhounds. Don Quixote
takes these sounds for bad omens, but Sancho disagrees. Sancho goes home
to his family, while Don Quixote finds the priest, the barber, and
Sampson. He tells them about his retirement and his plan to become
a shepherd. They support his plan wholeheartedly. They also plan
the jokes they will play on Don Quixote, despite the protests of
the niece and the housekeeper, who want only to feed Don Quixote
and put him to bed.

Chapter LXXIV

For me alone Don Quixote was born and
I for him. His was the power of action, mine of writing.

Don Quixote falls ill with a tremendous fever and lies
in bed for six days, during which Sancho never leaves his side.
When he wakes on the seventh day, Don Quixote has returned to sanity
and recognizes that his real name is Alonso Quixano. He disavows
all books of chivalry and repents his past actions. The priest,
the barber, and Sampson come by and try to persuade him to pursue
further adventures, especially the disenchantment of Dulcinea, but
Don Quixote wants only to make his will. He leaves everything to
his niece, his housekeeper, and Sancho. In his will, Don Quixote
also tells his friends to ask the author of the false sequel to
forgive him for providing the author with the occasion to write
such nonsense. Don Quixote then dies.

Cide Hamete Benengeli mourns Don Quixote’s passing, saying that
he and Don Quixote were born for each other—Don Quixote to act,
Benengeli to write. He adds that his sole purpose in writing was
to rouse contempt for the “fabulous and absurd stories of knight-errantry.”

Analysis: Chapters LXVII–LXXIV

Once Don Quixote renounces chivalry, he ceases to exist.
After much digression on his way home, he unexpectedly has a bout
of sanity and dies, as though the chivalric knight within him cannot live
and breathe once he returns to a world whose values are different
from his own. Don Quixote dreams for one night of being a shepherd
and wakes a week later recanting everything that has come before—an
act that may devalue many of the novel’s adventures. Benengeli implies
this devaluation when he writes about the dubious nature of the
incident at Montesinos’s Cave. Not even the apparently earnest attempts
of Don Quixote’s friends to make him rise and roam the countryside
as a shepherd inspire him to live.

The meeting with Don Alvaro provides Don Quixote with
one last chance to assert his identity. Already in a downward spiral,
Don Quixote temporarily breaks out of his funk during this meeting.
He asserts his dignity and former glory by repudiating the fake
Don Quixote and by forcing the best friend of the fake Don Quixote
to swear allegiance to him. Though this last-ditch effort to assert
his honor may seem pathetic in light of his recent defeat by the
Knight of the White Moon and his plans to retire, it displays Don
Quixote’s sincere nature.

The end of the novel is deeply concerned with authorship.
The novel’s conclusion abounds with insults against the counterfeit sequel
to the history of Don Quixote. These insults include the remarks
about the musician who justifies plagiarism, the tale of the devils
who throw the book into hell, and Don Alvaro’s disavowal of the
counterfeit Don Quixote. Cervantes allows Benengeli to have the
last word, which supports the idea that Cervantes has merely been
translating Benengeli’s text all along. At the end of the novel, Cervantes
clings to his legacy as the bearer of Don Quixote’s tale just as
Don Quixote tries to preserve his name through Don Alvaro.

Even as Benengeli attempts to tear apart traditional
chivalric texts, he elevates Don Quixote to an heroic status. Benengeli
says that Don Quixote needed him to survive throughout history but adds
that he needed Don Quixote in order to write. Cervantes’s purpose
in writing Don Quixote is much greater than simple
self-glorification, a fact Cervantes highlights by distancing himself
from the final words of the text. Benengeli admits that his purpose
in writing was to show that chivalric tales are ridiculous, because
they deny reality and gloss over the tragedy of trying to live an
ideal, romantic life in an imperfect world. Benengeli wants his
historical account of Don Quixote to put to rest any remaining chivalric
tales that fail to highlight the tragic elements of knight-errantry—tragic
elements so evident in the character of Don Quixote. Though Don
Quixote’s chivalric spirit and physical body may die, the final
paragraph of the novel heightens our sympathy for Don Quixote, ensuring
that he will live on with us.

In your analysis of the second part of Don Quixote, you write: "The story of Anna Felix and Don Gregorio tempers Cervantes’s otherwise rampant racism" - Really? This is a masterpiece that has survived the centuries because of it's jawdroppingly brilliant use of irony, but you can't seem to notice the difference between the first narrator (Cide Hamete's translator) and Cervantes himself!